David Fewster

COVER GIRLS

Sometimes I take my

vintage Dell paperbacks of

Richard B.'s off the shelves,

not to re-read them, 

but to place them on the table

and gaze at the iconic photos

of the author's girlfriends du jour:

Trout Fishing in America's

inscrutable granny-glassed wraith

straight out on an 1850's daguerreotype

the haughty hippie goddess of

The Pill Versus the Springfield Mine Disaster

the spunky Scandinavian beauty

playing in the sand adorning

Rommel Drives on Deep Into Egypt

and, most disturbingly, the young woman

(looking all the world like a teenage runaway)

posing for In Watermelon Sugar,

whose vapid expressionless stare suggests

horrors witnessed and/or endured

over the much-vaunted Summer of Love...

And I find myself thinking of

Suze Rotolo, making hay

for her retirement with

her memoir of that

two-timing weasel Bobby D.

or even the 3 gals from

"Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!"

who, 40 years after the fact,

re-united for a "making-of" documentary

and sundry appearances at

fancy international retrospectives,

belatedly getting the love

they always deserved for

their shining moment of 

cinematic glory

And so, it seems a shame that,

considering all the Beat

literary conferences and festivals

proliferating around the globe,

the Brautigan girls couldn't have

gone on the road and

gotten some recompense for their years

of service as unpaid models

Maybe they should've unionized